As part of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Small-Scale Irrigation, Tanzanian scientists converge for training on the use numerical computer simulations that predict the effects of implementing new agricultural practices and technologies.

The above video describes the four objectives of the USAID-funded Tropical Plant Curriculum project in Indonesia. The project paired the Texas A&M Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture with three universities in Indonesia to build curriculum around new uses for underutilized tropica...

Dr. Norman Borlaug, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Father of the Green Revolution, spent his life inspiring those around him to join his fight against world hunger and poverty.
In this video, recorded March 2014, those who worked closely with the man who saved a billion lives recount some of the a...

The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Small-Scale Irrigation is a research project of the U.S. Government to discover and test sustainable practices and technologies for irrigation of smallholder farms across water-scarce Africa.

Tuesday | March 3, 2015, 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. | Texas A&M University | Agriculture and Life Sciences Building (AGLS), Room 129 | West Campus
Dr. Jimmy Smith, director general of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) will highlight the changes and challenges of transforming a globally i...

The Borlaug Institute welcomes international development expert Michael Godfrey of Abt Associates.
Godfrey will review trends in modernizing South Sudan’s farming systems through five years of work on the USAID-funded Food, Agribusiness and Rural Markets project.
The project strengthens farming ...

Ruben Echeverria, Director General of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, will explore opportunities for collaboration in agriculture research between CIAT and TAMU. The seminar comes as TAMU and CIAT each seek augment their global research and development agendas.
The Feb. 6 event i...

The Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture welcomes Dr. Bruce McCarl and Dr. Rabi Mohtar, professors of Texas A&M University, to disuss how the world’s changing climate affects global food supplies and the measures that must be taken to ensure food security for future generations.
...

Dr. Brady Deaton, Chairman of the Board for International Food and Agricultural Development, joins Dr. Rob Bertram, Cheif Scientist of the United States Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Food Security, in a review of how the United States aims to employ agricultural science to figh...

Jeff Simmons, president of Elanco, will review three solutions to solving the problem of world hunger in his Monday afternoon seminar “ENOUGH: The Fight for a Food-secure tomorrow.”
Join the Borlaug Institute and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Texas A&M University September 29,...

Peace Corps recruiter Curt Baker will join a panel
of current and former Corps volunteers to discuss
the organization’s role in agricultural development
across the globe.
The panel will review steps for getting involved and
the myriad ways that Peace Corps has shaped their
lives and careers.
The ...

The Borlaug Institute welcomes Amy Baker, executive director of the 2Seeds Network -- a non-profit that recruits new graduates for development work in Africa.
Baker, in the latest installment of the Borlaug Institute 2014 Seminar Series, will discuss human capital development in agricultural and ec...

The Student Initiative for International Development (SIID) is an organization whose mission is to educate undergratuade student on involvement in international development work.
SIID will present insights on first encounters with true poverty abroad and lessons learned from the experience. The gro...

Friday | Sept. 18, 2015 | 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. | Texas A&M University | Agriculture and Life Sciences Building (AGLS) Room 129 | West Campus
Dr. Dennis Carroll currently serves as the Director of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Global Health Security and Development Unit. In ...

Friday | April 17, 2015 | 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. | Texas A&M University, Agriculture and Life Sciences Building (AGLS) Room 129, West Campus
David Atteberry, Deputy Assistant Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will present international development trends and ...

Thursday, March 5, 2015, 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. | Texas A&M University, Horticulture/Forest Sciences Building (HFSB) Room 104, West Campus
In the second seminar of a two-day sub-series, John Bowman of the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID) will discuss what it takes to enter a car...

The Borlaug Institute, in observance of International Women's Day, reflects on the work we do with women across the globe and on the future of empowering women of the developing world to be agricultural leaders.

In the above video, Christopher Bielecki, a Ph.D student of agricultural leadership, education and communication at Texas A&M University, reviews the research he's conducted in Guatemala on hunger and poverty using photography. Bielecki discusses how photos might present a new approach to collecting...

Carrying on the Borlaug Legacy: Benjamin Davies
In the above video, Benjamin Davies, a master student of Soil & Crop Sciences at Texas A&M University, discusses his ongoing research on soil tilling and amendment in Ghana.
Davies' research seeks to find which soil practices and technologies most ef...

Silvano Assanga is a Ph.D student of plant breeding at Texas A&M University. His research focuses on wheat breeding and genetics, specifically drought tolerance, rust and a complementary study on wheat streak mosaic virus. Assanga is also a recipient of the prestigious Monsanto Beachell-Borlaug Inte...

Struggle for Survival is a simulation by the Crossroads Foundation that uses hands-on exercises to illustrate how poverty affects people's ability to provide for their families. The simulation on Sept. 18, 2015, was held at Texas A&M University for students interested to understand more about life i...

The Borlaug Digital Archive seeks to provide scholars and the general public with access to the papers of Dr. Norman E. Borlaug in an effort to build on his lifetime of research and inspire the next generation of scholars as they confront the agricultural challenges of the twenty-first century.

Thanks to the generosity of the Borlaug family and with the support of the Office of the Vice Chancellor of Agriculture at Texas A&M University, the Borlaug Digital Archives is now available for research. Currently, the repository contains more than 20,000 scanned records from Dr. Borlaug’s home office and his office at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) near Mexico City. These records span Dr. Borlaug’s career from 1960-1979 and include documents discussing the Nobel Peace Prize and his correspondence concerning population control. In the future, the repository will also include notes, lectures and correspondence from Dr. Borlaug’s office on the campus of Texas A&M University covering the period from 1984-2008. Additional records documenting the early part of Dr. Borlaug’s career will also be included as they become available.

Researchers interested in accessing Dr. Borlaug’s papers are able to browse the folders or conduct key word searches of the records. Finding aids describing the provenance of the collection will also be available to assist researchers with citations.

Distinguished Professor of International Agriculture | Texas A&M University

Nobel Peace Prize | 1970

US Presidential Medal of Freedom | 1977

US Congressional Gold Medal | 2006

United Nations FAO Agricola Medal | 2010

Known as the father of the Green Revolution, Norman Ernest Borlaug was born in 1914 on a farm near Cresco, Iowa. After completing his early education in his hometown, he went on to study forestry and plant pathology at the University of Minnesota, where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees and completed his doctorate in 1942. After two years as a microbiologist with the DuPont de Nemours Foundation , he took on the challenge of leading the wheat improvement efforts of the Cooperative Mexican Agricultural Program, sponsored by the Mexican government and the Rockefeller Foundation.

In Mexico, Dr. Borlaug’s scientific knowledge found expression in a humanitarian mission: developing improved grain varieties to feed the hungry people of the world. A practical, energetic, hands-on researcher, Dr. Borlaug worked in the fields alongside farm workers, students, and interns, sharing his knowledge as well as the labor of producing food crops. During his twenty years in Mexico, Dr. Borlaug and his colleagues perfected a dwarf wheat variety that could produce large amounts of grain, resist diseases, and resist lodging – the bending and breaking of the stalk that often occurs in high-yielding grains. Under Dr. Borlaug’s guidance, this new wheat was planted with great success, not only in Mexico, but also in India and Pakistan. In subsequent years, the wheat was planted in nations in Central and South America, the Near and Middle East, and Africa.

In 1964, Dr. Borlaug was appointed director of the Wheat Research and Production Program at the then newly established International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) near Mexico City. This position allowed him to expand his teaching mission. He shared his immense knowledge of research and production methods with thousands of young scientists from all over the world, “seeding” agricultural production in their home countries with new ideas and new productivity.

Despite having received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 – and, over the years, multitudinous honors and recognitions from universities, governments, and organizations worldwide – Dr. Borlaug remains a deeply humble and practical man who has been as productive after winning this major honor as he was before.

He came to Texas A&M University in 1984 as Distinguished Professor of International Agriculture and has continued to teach and inspire young scientists at Texas A&M and at CIMMYT. Hailed as having saved more lives than anyone else in the history of mankind, Dr. Borlaug cites as one of his most prized tributes the naming of a street in his honor in Ciudad Obregon, Sonora, Mexico – the site of some of his earliest research projects.

Dr. Norman Ernest Borlaug died at the age of 95 on September 12, 2009. His legacy lives on in the work being conducted at Texas A&M University, CIMMYT and by farmers around the world who benefited from Dr. Borlaug's dedicationa and personal sacrifice in the pursuit of scientific knowledge.

Recommended books on the life of Dr. Borlaug and the fight against hunger.

Enough: How the World’s Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty. by Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman. PublicAffairs, 2009.

Borlaug: The Mild-Mannered Maverick Who Fed a Billion People by Noel Vietmeyer. Bracing Books, 2008.